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cars

The other day I was reflecting on how technology is changing the way we live. The way we think and act. How we relate to one another and how we get from point A to B. Petrol driven cars are a thing of the past. One man who fundamentally knows this to be true is Elon Musk. For those who have never heard of him, he is the guy that brought us PayPal. An absolute necessity for any E bay user. Musk dabbles in a lot of what he considers great ideas. One of those great ideas is to spend a lot of money developing an electric car. As a concept it ticks plenty of boxes. Environmentally friendly, electric cars emit no greenhouse gases. Lets face it within the next 15 to 20 years the world is going to be driving a lot of electric cars. Putting aside environmental concerns, the planet is running out of fossil fuel.

Musk’s company is called Tesla. And Tesla Motors makes beautiful cars. The man behind some of those designs is the electric carmaker’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, He and his team create the signature Tesla look. And the Germanic in him means he pays great attention to pedantic detail that includes taking a fresh look at something as innocuous as door handles and coming up with something fancy, like gullwing doors that will appear on the company’s next car, the Model X. Not a new concept, but the gullwinged Mercedes sports, first introduced in 1954, still has the ability to cause severe cases of car envy.

“What I really wanted to achieve was this moth-to-the-flame (result). You don’t really realize what you are looking at or why you are attracted to it, but you are,” Von Holzhausen said. “That engagement is what sparks curiosity.”

Von Holzhausen has the enviable job of creating the design benchmark for Tesla, which is trying to carve out a market for electric cars and convince the public that gasoline rides are destined to become obsolete in the same way that motorised cars put the horse and buggy out of business. Von Holzhausen joined Tesla in mid-2008 after designing at Mazda, General Motors and Volkswagen. There are, of course, other automakers that come up with sexy curves and slick looks for their cars. But Tesla, so far, has stolen a march on its competitors in the good looks department.

I don’t want this to sound like I am doing some kind of sales pitch for Tesla. It’s just that I have a soft spot for David and Goliath like stories. Part of Tesla’s appeal, for me, is how this upstart, which has upstaged long-time carmakers already, may go on to become a major player in the auto world one day. And how this niche fledgling electric car company takes an unconventional approach to elements of a car that some might regard as unimportant and use them to win over a car buyer’s heart, An example of that is the door handle for the Tesla Model S. It slides out and retreats with the control of a key fob. It’s something that carmakers usually don’t spend a lot of time or money on. But Tesla’s designers thought differently. “As you approach the car for the first time, your first contact is through the door handle,” von Holzhausen said. “It’s a memorable experience. It needs to elicit an emotion.”

Tesla’s all-wheel drive Model S P85D is the most supercharged model of any electric sports car to hit the market.

It retails for US$133,500, but this not your average automobile. For a start, its 691 horsepower, dual-motor is capable of running on autopilot by using cameras and ultrasonic sensors to read speed limits, monitor other cars on the road and park automatically.

However, the most impressive addition to the car is a feature called “insane mode”. The aptly titled feature lives up to its name with one push of a button accelerating from 0 to 95km/h, that’s a click under 60mph, in just over three seconds.

In order to test Tesla’s latest mode, a drag racing website took unsuspecting victims (members of the public) for a spin in the S P85D to experience the car’s rapid acceleration for the first time. They recorded the spectacle on camera and if the screams, shocked facial features and profanities are anything to go by, it would appear Telsa are on to a real winner with this sports car if you can afford the asking price. But the reactions to ‘insane mode’ are priceless.

I’ve posted the video here, profanities included. Hopefully it will give you a laugh and a half.